John Steigerwald: Dan Snyder should have realized long ago Redskins wouldn’t work in 21st century

What’s in a name?

Daniel Snyder, who owns the NFL franchise in Washington D.C., is finding out, at least 10 years too late, that the name Redskins is no longer a good idea.

The fact FedEx, which paid $220 million for stadium naming rights, requested a name change and, according to AD Week, 87 investing firms and shareholders worth a combined $620 billion signed a letter asking FedEx, PepsiCo and Nike to sever ties with the team, might have given Snyder a little bit of a nudge.

Ten years ago Snyder said the name would never be changed and there were polls done by the Washington Post and Sports Illustrated that showed most Native Americans had no problem with the name.

That was then and this is now.

And you may have noticed that now it doesn’t take much to be offensive, even though often it seems people other than the group that is supposed to be offended are more offended than the supposedly offended group.

There’s a lot of virtue signaling going on out there.

Redskins was always a pretty dumb name when you think about it. Who makes mascots out of an entire race of people?

Although, that may not have been the intent. Kerry Byrne of Coldhardfootballfacts.com wrote a piece in the Boston Herald back in 2014 explaining the origin of the name.

They were the Boston Braves before moving to Washington. And the logo was a likeness of Tammany, a member of the Lenni-Lenape tribe. He was, according to Byrne, revered by Revolutionary leaders and a confidant of William Penn.

He was referred to as King Tammany, and John Adams declared a day in his honor in 1777 and said, “The people here have sainted him and keep him to this day.”

There were patriotic societies named after him all around the country.

That’s why the infamous Boss Tweed in New York is associated with Tammany Hall. A statue of Tammany stands in the entrance of Tammany Hall in New York City.

The Boston Braves football team stole the nickname from the local National League baseball team, which the early NFL teams liked to do. (The Steelers were the Pirates before they became the Steelers.)

The name didn’t work when the Braves moved from Braves Field in Boston to Fenway Park and the owners wanted to keep the colors and the Tammany logo, so they became the Redskins.

They kept that name when they moved to Washington in 1937.

A nice story but still kind of a dumb name. The intentions were good. It was about honoring a man who was known as Saint Tammany, Patron of America — which seemed to be a good fit in America’s capital city.

That was 1937.

Back then, nobody was suggesting George Washington or Thomas Jefferson should be canceled because they owned slaves. Now there are potential candidates for vice president who are saying it might be a good idea.

We’re living in a different world. It’s been different for a while, and Snyder should have realized a long time ago that the name wouldn’t work in the 21st century.

Now, of course, the name change — and it will be changed — will look like it was all about the money, which is exactly what it is all about.

The question now is where does it end? If the cancel culture continues its march to the mainstream, people in the sports media who have refused to utter or write the word Redskins when referring to Washington’s NFL franchise might start refusing to mention the name of the city the team calls home.

And no nickname may be safe.

John Holloway, the vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at Emory & Henry College in Virginia, is seriously considering changing his school’s nickname.

Right now, it’s Wasps.

But Holloway thinks it might be a problem because WASP is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

I’m not kidding.